Trauma
by GoldSeven
Summary: Set after "Brave New World". Peter is unwilling to go public with his abilities, but when he is shot during a call, he may have to change his mind. Peter, Hesam, Emma, Claire, Angela & al. Rated T for language and injuries to characters.
1. Aftermath

**Set**: After _Brave New World_.

**Characters **(in order of "screen time"): Peter*, Hesam, Emma, Angela, Claire, Zach, Sylar, Noah.

*although he does spend a good deal of this fic unconscious. Or wishing he was.

**Warning**: I'm completely aware that this one is really nothing but a "Get Peter" fic under the poor pretext of being (minorly) speculative for Volume Six, but I thought I'd just treat myself to something I've been wanting to write for quite a while now.

**More Warnings**: (Eventually) very bad language, (eventually) serious injuries to characters, a lot of blood, sweat, puke, and tears.

There. You have been warned. Enjoy! Reviews very much appreciated! ^^

.

.

**TRAUMA**

.

.

**1 **

**Aftermath**

"My name is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt number… I guess I've kind of lost count."

Peter switched off the TV, but the queasy feeling in his gut remained. The early morning news were all showing the footage over and over, of the girl who had fallen sixty feet from a Ferris wheel and pulled her dislocated shoulder back into place, all in front of the cameras. In the chaos following the events at the Carnival, and Claire's revelation, he hadn't been able to get hold of her before her father had succeeded in whisking her away from the media. Claire's fall wasn't the only thing that was keeping the press busy. In the news report he'd just been watching, there had been talk of other strange things happening at the Carnival – people seemingly flying (that would have been him), people going to see the show without really remembering why they had done so (that would have been Emma), and, of course, Samuel Sullivan evidently moving the ground with the power of his mind.

A part of Peter still felt like a coward for not being there with Claire, but even if he had wanted to make his own abilities public there and then – which he didn't – what would he have done? Open up the ground? Great idea. Borrow Claire's ability and climbing up that Ferris wheel, too? Yeah, right.

He was hardly surprised when his phone rang, and he saw his mother's number on the display, for the second time since last night.

"Hi, Mom. Anything new?"

"Noah just called. He and Claire will be on their way to California by mid-morning."

Peter sighed. "I bet she loves that."

"What she loves or doesn't love isn't an issue. What she did last night was reckless and foolish in the extreme. She needs to be protected, not least of all from herself."

"The two of you still can't see you can't protect someone who doesn't want to be protected, right?"

There was a slight pause, and to Peter's surprise, Angela let the matter go. "Are you working today?" she asked instead.

"No, Saturday is my other day off."

He half-waited for her to remark that, so far, she wouldn't have noticed, but she again surprised him by saying, "Be careful, OK?"

"Careful with what? Jumping off Ferris wheels?"

"With everything."

He realised how serious she was, and resisted replying with another quip. "I promise, Mom. Take care."

"I am. You take care."

As he had hung up the phone, Peter sat drumming his knee for a moment before getting up abruptly, put on his coat, and went out.

* * *

"You did tell your Dad you're with me, right?"

Claire leant across the railing of the Manhattan Bridge and looked down into the brownish water of the East River. She wore a coat with the collar turned up against the cold*, along with a woollen cap, both of which had the nice side effect of making her less noticeable to any of the pedestrians on the bridge who had been reading newspapers or watched TV since the night before. It was a good thing that the cold meant there were relatively few pedestrians around.

"Yeah, and I had to promise to be back at eleven AM." Claire grimaced, then she turned and gave Peter a glance. "You know, I'm still trying to decide whether you're going to take me to task or not."

"I'm still trying to decide that, too."

She waited.

"But after what I did at Nathan's wake, I feel I kind of lost the right to."

"So I guess we're even."

Peter blew on his hands to warm them. "Except I didn't expose us on purpose."

Claire turned with a sigh and propped up her elbows on the railing behind her, her back to the river. "Well, here we are. You're taking me to task as well."

"We have absolutely no idea where this'll lead, Claire. I've seen what can happen. I was kind of expecting a me from the future to show up and try to shoot you, but he probably knew that wasn't going to work. Or will know. Whatever."

"Or maybe it'll just work out this time. We know the future isn't set in stone, right? When Nathan was about to expose all of us publicly, you were fine with that."

"Because I didn't have a clue what was going to happen."

"No, because deep down, you were sick of hiding your powers, sick of pretending to be normal. Just like me."

Peter watched the dirty water swirl below. "I guess I was."

Claire turned again, leaning over the railing, looking at him. "What about now?"

He sighed. "That was a long time ago."

Claire watched his profile for a while. "You know what you told me, about helping people in your job, using powers and having to hide them? Wouldn't it be great to be doing it right out in the open?"

Peter gave her a weak smile. "Even if it was – moving earth around isn't going to help people who are having a heart attack."

"Maybe if you took my ability again?" she said.

He shook his head. "My blood doesn't heal people, Claire. Only yours and Adam's worked like that." He cast her a sidelong glance. "But hey, it's really nice to know you're willing to let me copy your power in order to help other people, but not when I'm haemorrhaging."

She caught his slight smile, and returned it. Then she cast a look at her watch. "I need to go. Take care, right? Leave homicidal maniacs to the police."

"Yeah. Seems like years since the last one." He saw her frown and considered telling her about what had happened when he had entered Sylar's nightmare, but that was another can of worms he was not going to open now, with so little time to explain properly. If that was even possible. "Can I take you somewhere?"

"No, our hotel is just a quarter hour from here. Dad has rented a car." Claire grimaced.

"You're not taking a flight back?"

"No. Too exposed." She made another face. "And it's hardly 'back.' Dad's currently trying to call in favours to find a place to live. Or to hide me."

Peter chuckled. "I know a nice, very discreet motel in Costa Verde. Though I think your father wasn't exactly happy with the accommodations."

"I'll remind him if we don't find anything else." She pushed herself away from the railing, and hugged him. "It was good to see you. I'll see you around, OK? Do nothing I wouldn't do."

He gave another chuckle as he returned the hug. "I very probably won't."

He watched her leave, pulling down her cap against the cold wind, walking back towards Brooklyn. When he couldn't see her anymore, he turned, and walked back in the opposite direction.

.

.

.

* * *

*Yes, in my fics, it is actually winter!

Next chapter(s): Bring on the paramedfic! Hesam comes very close to doing the math, until a BS (=bullshit) call turns into something much, much worse and other things become more important.


	2. Premonitions

**2**

**Premonitions**

_Rain pouring down into dark, almost empty streets. An ambulance racing past, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Inside, a flurry of activity as paramedics fight for the life of a man on the stretcher. Blood everywhere, quick commands going back and forth. One of the medics, a heavy-set woman, preparing an injection. The other, a man, reaching for the defibrillator. The body jerks as it is hit by an electric jolt. A flat line on the monitor. One of the paramedics shifting to reveal the sleeve of the man on the stretcher: a blood-smeared paramedic patch._

* * *

Peter arrived at the hospital twenty minutes early for his shift, as usual. He got the keys and radios and went to the garage to check the equipment when Hesam arrived, also as usual. Hesam had a record of being chronically late (or last minute) for work, but he had recently made an effort of arriving not long after Peter.

"Hey," Peter said as he saw him. "How was your day off?"

Hesam nodded. "It was good," he replied. "Had a quiet Friday… went out for lunch… and stayed clear of Central Park." One look at his partner's face told Peter that small talk was over.

Peter turned back to the spare oxygen cylinders he'd been checking and lightly said, "Lucky nobody got hurt there, huh?"

"Yeah," Hesam replied, and Peter could almost feel his eyes on him. "Like that girl falling sixty feet without a scratch on her. Claire Bennet, her name was?"

Peter had taken the paediatric box from the side door rack to check its contents, but didn't open it. He slowly turned to face Hesam. "I think so, yeah?"

The Iranian was looking at Peter intently. "I'd been kind of hoping you'd be able to tell me more about all this."

Peter ostentatiously returned his attention to the paediatric box, but Hesam had to see he wasn't actually doing anything with it. "Why would I?"

"We treated a Noah Bennet for stab wounds last September. Or rather, you did. I arrived some ten minutes after you. I did write up the run form, though. You told me he was a friend of yours."

Peter was about to make a reply about the commonness of the name "Bennet", but he swallowed it, and waited.

"And then I remembered that someone named Claire called you on the phone last summer. That was just before you vanished for weeks."

Peter finally looked at Hesam again, slowly putting back the paediatric box. He hoped this was all. He might still be able to contain the damage.

"And then," Hesam finished, as if he had kept this item until last on purpose, "that guy who supposedly caused an earthquake on Friday night – Samuel Sullivan? They were showing his photo on the news. I could have sworn I knew him as William Hooper."

Peter stood there, his jaw working, and didn't answer.

"You think you're the only one around here who remembers his patients by name? I added two and two yesterday. And somehow felt like I was in the middle of things I totally didn't understand. Only it wasn't me, it was you."

Peter still made no reply, and this time, Hesam seemed to struggle for how to continue.

"So," he finally said, not taking his eyes off Peter. "Getting clam chowder down from Boston. Running off when we get on scene, pulling pregnant women from crashed cars suspended in mid-air. People I could have sworn were this short of traumatic arrest miraculously arriving at the hospital just 'slightly shaken'. Peter, I'm not an idiot. If I thought what you were doing was wrong in the slightest, I'd have reported you a long time ago. I didn't. Now just return the favour, and be honest with me."

Peter had never realised just how much of the math Hesam had done in the previous months. Or maybe, now that he thought about it, of course he had. Anyone but an idiot would have had to notice that strange things kept happening around Peter. He'd just been grateful that Hesam was usually willing to let most matters go.

Until yesterday, he had been under the impression that Claire really hadn't exposed anyone but herself. Now he found how wrong that impression had been.

He was still groping for an answer when he was rescued by his cell phone ringing. He cast Hesam a glance that he hoped was apologetic, and was surprised to see his mother's number on the display. She knew he was about to go on shift, and never tried to call him at work.

"Mom?" he said. "What's the matter?" He waited for Hesam to jerk his head in the direction of the back door, in obvious annoyance, and jumped out to have some more privacy.

"You're at work?" Angela asked.

"Yeah, course I am."

He heard her exhale sharply. "Peter, I know you won't break off your shift if I ask you to, but… you need to promise me you'll be careful."

"You've had a dream?" he asked, almost matter-of-factly, but quietly, with a look over his shoulder into the back of the ambulance. Hesam had turned to the paediatric box in order to finally check if it was stocked properly, and had his back to him.

"For the second time last night. Just promise me you won't do anything reckless."

He could sense her concern again, as well as her resignation that he would never miss a shift because of a dream. "Do I want to know the details?" he finally asked.

"I couldn't give you any. The dream was very confused. Just… be careful. OK?"

"I will be. Talk to you later, Mom." Peter kept his tone light.

As he pocketed the phone again and went back up into the rig, he wished she hadn't called. He'd be careful. Fine, so he wouldn't go after homicidal maniacs today, something which he hadn't been planning on doing in the first place. But apart from that, he'd most likely be better off pushing the phone call from his mind, or he would spend most of the day worrying about freak accidents.

She probably wouldn't even have called him, he thought, if it hadn't been for Nathan.

Hesam had almost finished the checkup in the meantime, and gave Peter another look under raised eyebrows while he was checking the drug box. Peter had almost forgotten that he had other problems than his mother's vague dreams.

"Listen, man," he said heavily, as it became clear Hesam was not going to just let the matter rest this time. "I can… do stuff. And it's such a long story that I couldn't begin to explain it over restocking the drug box. I'll fill you in, OK? Just not right now."

Hesam hesitated, then nodded.

"And one other thing." Peter looked at Hesam intently. "I really appreciate that you've kept quiet about me until now. I'm asking you to keep it like this. At least for the time being. OK?"

Hesam returned his partner's intent gaze, then he shook his head with a chuckle. "I must be crazy for even putting up with you for this long. OK, I'll keep shut, and patiently wait to be clued in." He glanced at his watch. "Damn, let's call dispatch and clear. It's already five minutes past. And this time, it really wasn't my fault for once."


	3. Bullshit call

**3 **

**Bullshit call  
**

Double shifts could be a tedious affair, and were definitely not improved by phone calls of impending doom. What did improve this one was the fact that it was a rather busy night, which both kept Hesam from expecting Peter to tell him about powers, and served to keep Peter's mind from wondering what Angela had seen in her dream, at least most of the time. Still, by ten p. m., he had indulged in imagining the more ridiculous possibilities of coming to harm that the day had presented – contracting toxaemia from a violent toddler that had bitten his finger was a favourite, with being buried underneath a four-hundred-and-fifty-pound man they had to carry down from the fourth floor in a stair chair coming a close second. He wished he could have shared those with Hesam. It was the kind of in-joke that would have been just right on a day like this. But that would have meant telling him that his mother had an ability, too, and Peter wasn't quite ready for that yet.

"I guess I'm getting old," Hesam groaned, rubbing his aching back, after they had taken their patient into the hospital. "I swear we were able to carry that woman last fall a lot easier." He shot his partner a suspicious glance. "Unless that was somehow your doing."

Peter didn't look up from his run report. "You know what? I wanna put everyone living higher up than second floor on a diet. Just in case they need an ambulance one day – which they will – and the elevator is out of order."

"Sounds good. Where do I sign?"

"Here, actually." Peter pushed the report over for Hesam to sign.

Hesam scribbled his signature on the back of the run form and pocketed his pen again. "Ten thirty, and I feel like midnight already," he said with a sigh. "I'm off to the candy machine. I need some sugar."

Peter arched an eyebrow at him. "Don't think I'll ever carry you down from the fourth floor if you keep eating that stuff." He took up the run report to drop it off at the reception desk, and followed Hesam out.

"No worries. I'll find an apartment at ground level."

"I can't believe you can bear to eat any candy now. Patients like that always leave me with a craving for salad."

They were still bantering as they exited the doors to the ambulance bay, and neither of them initially saw One Union coming towards them way too fast, with lights but no sirens, or they might have been forewarned.

Hesam shouted a warning and pulled Peter back from the curb as the ambulance flashed past them by no more than five inches, coming to a halt a few feet away.

"Are you out to lunch, Doug?" Hesam yelled at the car.

Douglas Richards jumped down from the driver's seat and raced around the side of the ambulance, shouting back a breathless "Sorry!" as he opened the back door and helped his paramedic partner, Shannon Kemper, to unload a collared and boarded patient. Peter remembered them being dispatched to an MVA not half an hour previously.

"Someone's not keen on their end-of-year driving bonus," Hesam grumbled, then cast a look at Peter. "You OK?"

"Yeah." Peter drew a long, steadying breath as they watched Doug and Shannon wheeling their patient to the trauma room, and wondered whether his mother had dreamt of him being run over by an ambulance. He couldn't quite decide on whether this was a particularly poetic or a particularly stupid way to go for a paramedic.

_There, Mom_, he thought. _I've been careful. Or at least Hesam was. That ought to have taken care of it, don't you think?_

As they sat back in the truck and cleared, Peter felt a lot better than he had.

* * *

Rain was drumming on the windshield as Peter and Hesam finished a late night snack of packaged sandwiches in the car. It was four-thirty AM, and it was a slow night, as weekend nights went. The calls were different at night than they were at daytime. You usually got about the same amount of bullshit calls, but during the day, these tended to be minor cuts to fingers or a cough on a toddler that would have warranted a scarf around the neck rather than an ambulance (plus, the scarf around the neck wouldn't mind being bitten so much). At night, the bullshit calls were rather heavy on the drunk side, especially on weekends.

"Unknown on Eldridge," a call came in over dispatch, and Peter and Hesam exchanged a glance. Unknowns in that area, at this time of night, usually translated to drunks.

"I'd volunteer us, but we're just too far out," Hesam said smugly, eyeing the radio.

"This is Two Queen, you want us to check it out?" they heard Karen O'Neill's voice over the radio.

Peter laughed. "God, their night must be even slower than ours if she volunteers for something like that."

"What you wanna bet she does it to annoy Nicholas?" Hesam said with a grin.

"Yeah, must be it."

"One of our frequent flyers, do you reckon?"

Peter pondered this. "Could be Tommy."

"Too late for Tommy. He always goes down before 1 AM. He'll be sleeping it off by now."

Dispatch sent Four Charles, a basic car. Just three minutes later, Two Queen got their own BS call – for a coughing child on Forsyth.

"They do that at night, after all," Hesam remarked. "Nick's gonna love it."

"He probably will, too," Peter said with a shrug. "With a coughing child, he's in less danger of getting puked on."

"And the drunk might just as well have bitten him too."

"See. Everyone wins."

They settled back to wait, and Peter was just starting to fear that, if this pause dragged on for any longer, Hesam might decide it was a good moment to get some answers from him, when the voice of Anne Kraszewski came in over the radio, sounding panicked.

"Dispatch, this is Four Charlie. We need a medic here. Cocaine intoxication, patient not breathing."

Peter's hand was on its way to the mike when the dispatcher came in, "Two Victor, to Eldridge for the respiratory arrest. On a one."

Peter acknowledged as Hesam hit the lights and sirens and pulled out. "Not as BS as we thought, huh?" Peter said with a sidelong glance at his partner as they raced though the nightly Lower East Side.

It took them almost fifteen minutes to get on scene, but there simply hadn't been any other car near. "Two Victor, ten eighty-eight," Peter said into the mike, announcing their arrival on scene. He jumped out with the airway kit and nearly collided with a wildly gesticulating man talking to him in Chinese. Peter clapped the man's shoulder, told him to move aside and let him do his job, and arrived at the red brick wall where Anne Kraszewski and Simon Blumenthal were bagging a man lying on a stretcher on the ground. He, too, looked Chinese.

Simon looked relieved when the two paramedics arrived. "He was still talking when we got here," he told Peter as Hesam crouched to get the tube, swearing as he moved his knee out of a puddle. "Pupils dilated, tachycardia, hyperthermic. He was really violent too, jabbering in Chinese. All I could understand when he was talking English was 'They're coming to get me.' He dropped unconscious about twenty minutes ago."

Peter nodded. He wasn't overly worried about the 'they're coming to get me' part – it was the sort of paranoia you got from cocaine abusers all the time. "Get those people away from here, OK? We'll see what we can do."

The man had a rhythm, but an irregular one, and wasn't getting much oxygen through the bag valve mask. As Hesam went in with the laryngoscope to intubate him, he suddenly pulled back. "What the hell?" Not looking back, he said, "Peter, I need the… whatsitsname."

"Different size blade?" Peter asked.

"No, the… M thing, you know…" Hesam shook his opened hand several times, as if that could speed things up.

"Miller blade? Mackintosh blade?" Peter tried again.

"Damn!" Hesam said in exasperation, until it finally came to him. "Magill forceps."

Peter unearthed it from his bag and handed it to his partner.

With the laryngoscope and the forceps, Hesam scooped up a white and soggy little packet wrapped in plastic that had been wedged in the man's throat. Peter bent closer to look.

"Damn," he whispered. "How many of those did he swallow?"

"Bag him again," Hesam told Anne, as he examined the packet of cocaine between his gloved thumb and forefinger, wiping vomit off it. "This one held, but if he chewed on one of them and it got torn, he's a good as dead. Doesn't matter how many others there are."

"God," breathed Anne. "How did we miss that?"

"It was too deep down for you to find," Hesam reassured her as he went in again to pass the tube. "You really couldn't have done anything for him." He had barely finished when the man went asystole.

Hesam cursed as he got out two milligrams of epinephrine to slam through the tube. "Peter, get a line. We need diazepam, and paracetamol for the temperature. More epi and atropine, lidocaine if necessary. – My partner's gonna ride with you," he told Anne, exchanging a quick glance with Peter, who nodded his consent. "Get this guy to the hospital as fast as possible. I'm gonna call the cops."

Hesam went back to Two Victor to put their stretcher and monitor back, and to get on the radio. In the meantime, Anne did CPR on their patient, while Peter had great difficulty finding a vein. The man must have been using for years; his veins were knotted and hard, with long track marks. He finally managed to insert a twenty-two gauge, a very small size catheter, into the back of the man's hand, which he knew wouldn't be nearly enough.

"I'll get in a second line in the rig," he told Anne, pushing rain-slick hair out of his eyes and rising to his feet. "Let's load him and run. Keep doing CPR." He hooked up the drug case.

Simon got into the driver's seat as Peter and Anne pulled up the stretcher to take the man into the ambulance, Anne going up the ramp backwards with the head end, Peter pushing from below.

There was a screaming of tyres from around a corner, and a battered old pickup truck came racing towards them, rainwater spraying up behind it. As it went past, a window on the passenger side was rolled down, and someone fired. Two, three, four, five times.

Peter stopped counting after the third.


	4. Thirtyfive seconds

4

**Thirty-five seconds**

In the ambulance, Hesam heard the gunshots, slammed the stretcher into place and wheeled around as he heard the sound of the pickup racing on around the next corner. He took less than a second ascertaining it was safe, then jumped out of the rig and ran over to Four Charlie.

His mind tried to assess everything at once, but the sight of his partner doubled over on the ground, the hole of an entrance wound visible on the small of his back, momentarily overrode paramedic training.

"Peter!" he yelled as he crouched next to him, just as he heard Anne's shout, "He's hit!" from the inside. It took Hesam a second to realise that she was talking about their patient, not Peter.

The gunman in the car had certainly been trying to hit the Chinese man on the stretcher; two bullets had slammed into the back doors of the ambulance, another had grazed the man on the leg. Peter had been in the way of the remaining two. Hesam pulled off his gloves, which were still covered in their first patient's vomit, and carefully turned Peter on his back. He gave a curse when he saw the blood seeping through Peter's fingers, which were pressed against the large exit wound in his stomach. Peter gasped in pain as Hesam gently prised his hand away, careful to only touch his wrist, and saw a second gunshot wound in his right shoulder, though this one seemed to have grazed him rather than going through. With the dark rainwater pooling on the ground, it was hard to tell how much of it was actually blood. Judging by the size of stomach wound, it was probably a lot.

Like Hesam, Peter had still been wearing gloves, and Hesam now peeled them off, to minimise the risk for infection, knowing it was high enough with this type of injury. He tried for a blood pressure, yanking open his bag to get out several 8x10" abdominal pads.

"This is bad, right?" Peter ground out through clenched teeth. "Christ!" He laid his forearm across his face, gasping.

Hesam mentally went through several possible replies, but they all rang hollow. "Hang on, OK?" he told Peter. "Try to lie still. We're getting you outta here." He gave up the blood pressure as a bad job and pressed the pads on the stomach wound. Peter groaned with pain.

Anne appeared in the back door, staring at the scene, her face white. Simon had jumped out from the driver's seat as well.

"I'll call for backup," he said, but Hesam was already reaching for the portable radio at his belt, while still keeping pressure on Peter's wound.

"This is Two Victor. We got a ten-thirteen. Send a second ALS car here ASAP. Drug-related shooting. Peter's down. Multiple ballistic trauma, abdominal injuries, severe bleeding, no palpable pulse, but responsive. Still on Eldridge. Repeat, ten-thirteen." Later, Anne would tell others admiringly how calm he'd been in that situation. Only funny that, later, Hesam would hardly recall the patch at all.

"Two Victor, please confirm. One shooting victim?"

"Yeah, one. _Peter_." Hesam couldn't believe how they didn't understand the first time.

What he would recall long afterwards was his relief at the voice that came in over the radio. "Two Queen here. We're five minutes out. Hesam, hang in there." If Hesam had been allowed to pick someone as backup, it would have been Karen O'Neill.

Anne had vanished again, to resume CPR on their first patient. Dispatch confirmed the assignment as Hesam fumbled for a fresh pair of gloves in the pocket of his uniform jacket, and struggled to pull them over his wet hands. In his mind, he raced through the options. He was a single paramedic, assisted by two willing, but basic-level EMTs, with a cardiac arrest and severe trauma to take care of. Two patients, both of whom needed to be taken to the hospital immediately, two rigs, two possible drivers, one medic. Of the three of them, Hesam was the only one who was allowed to administer cardiac drugs, or do IVs. Not nearly enough. All he could do was wait for Two Queen to arrive. And maybe grow one or two extra pairs of hands.

He grabbed Simon's arm. "Get Peter into our rig, hook him up to the monitor, and put him on oxygen. I need him out of this rain in case I have to shock him. If you have time, get his clothes off. And whatever you do, keep pressure on that wound. I'll be with you in two minutes. Anne!" he shouted. "Help Simon get Peter bundled up. I'll take care of our other guy; we'll trade places in two minutes. Peter – stay with us, buddy, you hear me?"

Peter gave a tight nod, curled up on his side, as Simon knelt next to him to take over keeping pressure on the wound. Anne jumped out from Four Charlie to get the stretcher.

Hesam felt the minutes trickling away as he squeezed past her to assess their first patient's condition. The monitor still showed asystole, no change to him at all. Hesam did compressions, then bagged, then pushed a milligram of atropine through the patient's IV, trying not to remember that Peter had got that line less than ten minutes ago. He was on the second round of compressions when Anne arrived, and he told her to take over doing CPR.

He quickly slapped a 4x4 on the new wound on the man's leg, and then gave another round of epinephrine and atropine. The drugs didn't bring any change. By the time he was done, he felt it had been six or seven minutes at least.

He went out again to check on his partner, leaving Anne doing CPR on their first patient. The man was dead; Hesam knew it. If a second dose of combined atropine and epinephrine didn't work, nothing short of a miracle was going to bring him back. But they were required to continue resuscitation; he wasn't allowed to assume him dead even under these circumstances. At least, protocol allowed him to concentrate his best efforts on Peter, as the one who was still within his ability to save.

Once outside, he pulled off his gloves and fumbled in his pocket, but it was empty. He ripped open his bag and finally found another fresh pair. He briefly registered that the police were on scene by now, but his mind was back on business as soon as he entered the back of unit Two Victor.

Simon had Peter strapped to the stretcher, put him on the monitor, and had applied new dressings to the wound in his abdomen after cutting away the front of his shirt. Now, he was just placing a non-rebreather mask over Peter's mouth and nose, cranking up the oxygen flow to ten litres. All the while, he was working one-handed; the other keeping pressure on the wound in Peter's stomach. Hesam felt his spirits plummet when he saw that his partner's pressure was 62 to 41. Peter's face was ashen, and he was shaking all over, his breath coming in ragged gasps. There was blood everywhere.

"What the _fuck_ have you been doing, man?" Hesam snapped at Simon. "Get his damn clothes off! Did you even _see_ the wound in his shoulder? And how'm I supposed to get a line like this?"

Simon stared at Hesam, but made no reply, only got to work on Peter's sleeve with the trauma shears, while still trying to stem the flow of blood with his left hand. Hesam felt vaguely sorry, but there was no time for anything more than vaguely. He feared now that one of the major abdominal blood vessels had been ruptured, and with a blood pressure this low, and unable to reach a hospital within the next quarter hour, Peter needed fluids, immediately.

As soon as Simon had Peter's left arm free, Hesam tied a tourniquet around the bicep, found the antecubital vein, and decided it could take a fourteen gauge catheter.

He briefly squeezed his partner's uninjured shoulder. "Peter," he said. "You with me?"

A jerky nod.

"I need to get an IV. I'm gonna go in with a fourteen." He was already unwrapping a fourteen gauge catheter as he said it.

It was hard to tell whether Peter nodded, or was just shaking uncontrollably, until he opened his eyes a fraction. His breathing was fast and shallow. "Any… chance for … painkillers?" he got out.

"I'm gonna call Med Control for orders in a minute. First I need to get your pressure back up. Hang on, buddy. All right?"

This time, Hesam was fairly sure Peter had nodded, gave him a reassuring pat on the arm, and went in with the needle. He felt the vein give way, got the flashback of blood that told him he was in, and then advanced the plastic catheter over the needle. "Simon, spike a bag of Ringer's."

Simon didn't look at him, just finished dressing the shoulder wound, and opened the drawer with the crystalloids, wordlessly taking out an IV bag of Lactated Ringer's solution.

Hesam withdrew the needle, released the tourniquet, secured the lock and taped the IV into place. He didn't wait for Simon to get the bag of Ringer's solution running, immediately bending over Peter to go for a second line in his other arm. A quick look at the monitor told him that Peter's pressure was crashing even further.

"Wait," Hesam heard him murmur feebly under the mask.

"I can't. You're in shock, Peter, and you're losing way too much blood. I need to get this second line."

Peter nodded again, shuddered, and then turned his head weakly as he vomited.

Hesam cursed as he tore the mask off Peter's face, cast it over at the biohazard container at Simon's seat, missed, and shouted to Simon for the suction unit and another non-rebreather mask. He pulled off his gloves, not even bothering to try and hit the biohazard bag this time, and cleaned Peter's face with a towel as best he could. Apart from the fact that vomit never looked particularly charming, it was too red for Hesam's liking, meaning there was blood in the stomach.

At that instant, Karen O'Neill's face appeared in the back door. She took in the vital signs on the monitor, Peter trying to double over, coughing and gasping, while being gently held down by Hesam, who was yanking a fresh pair of gloves from the attachment with his free hand while Simon suctioned reddish puke from Peter's airway. She jumped on board and took the suction unit from Simon, so that the EMT could finally spike the bag of Ringer's solution.

"What do you need me to do?" Karen asked when the suction tube remained clear.

Hesam assessed his options. Suddenly, there were so many. "First, I need us to get the hell out of here," he said. "Simon—"

Simon just tersely nodded his acknowledgement, and jumped out from the back door, the paper wrapping of an abdominal pad stuck to the sole of his boot. The ambulance looked like a medical battlefield.

"Intubate?" Karen asked when the back door slammed shut, with a worried glance at the monitor.

"No," Hesam said, echoed more weakly by Peter.

"He's still conscious," Hesam added while he reached for a new non-rebreather mask. "And he's breathing OK. Put another line in his right arm – I got a fourteen gauge in his left AC."

"'m sorry," Peter said with a feeble moan as Hesam fastened the fresh mask over his face.

"Dude," Hesam said, shaking his head in disbelief, "that ought to be pretty much your least concern right now."

The engine started up and began to move with a little lurch. Peter's left hand involuntarily jerked towards his stomach wound, but Hesam caught him before he could clutch at the dressings. Trembling, Peter gripped the side of the stretcher instead.

"God, it hurts," he whispered, barely audible over the sirens wailing overhead.

Hesam grimaced. "I know," he said. "But I can't do anything about that at the moment. You'd go out on me."

"There's… always… Narcan," Peter managed feebly.

Hesam gave an incredulous chuckle. "So you can puke all over me again? You'd think once was enough." Through the mask, he could see Peter giving a strained smile.

Karen was in the seat Simon had vacated. "This looks like a main blood vessel was hit," she said with a look at all the blood as she laid out her IV equipment.

"Yeah, I think so," Hesam said, glancing at the monitor. "Need to be careful with how much fluid we flush into him."

"Not another bolus of Ringer's, then," Karen said.

"No. Not yet, at least. Just put in a saline lock." He set to work with the trauma shears again, to get off Peter's soaking wet clothes and search for injuries they might have missed.

Karen applied a tourniquet as far below the shoulder wound as possible. "Peter," she said as she swabbed the crook of his arm with an alcohol prep. "It's Karen. I know it hurts. Hold your arm still; can you do that for me?"

Peter coughed and gave a nod, teeth clenched against the pain.

She prodded the site approvingly. "Hey. Anyone ever tell you you got very nice veins?"

Peter made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.

"Just watch that one," Hesam told him. "She compliments your veins today, she's gonna propose to you next." He reached up to his neck for his stethoscope to check Peter's lungs, but it wasn't there. Irritated, he looked around on the seat next to him, even on the ground, which was spattered with vomit, blood, and debris, but it was nowhere in sight.

Karen held out her stethoscope to Hesam, who took it with an acknowledging nod, and listened to Peter's lungs. There was some fluid in them, and Hesam looked for the oxygen levels on the monitor. They were at 95 percent, which he was fine with. He was glad that he wasn't forced to make an airway, much less on a conscious patient.

"Patch to the hospital," Hesam shouted to the front, over the wail of the sirens. "Tell them we've got a Room 1 trauma. I want a full trauma room staff."

"What d'you think I've been doing?" Simon's voice came back through the doghouse window between the driver compartment and the back, sounding rather testy.

"Get me Medical Control," Hesam went on without missing a beat. "Ask for orders for ten milligrams of morphine."

Hesam caught Karen's raised eyebrows, and remembered she belonged to a different generation of paramedics. Until a few years ago, morphine had been given very sparingly in emergency medicine, and even though the regulations on its use had changed, some of the older medics were still reluctant to use it, and if they did, kept it in very small doses.

"He's been gut-shot, Karen," he reminded her.

"I can see that. But his pressure is too low."

"I'll hold up until it's stable, obviously. It should soon be."

"I still wouldn't give that much," she said.

Hesam felt irritated. "_I_ would."

"Would you give it to any odd MVA victim?" she asked.

"Yeah," he snapped. "Because I was precepted in 2001, not in 1980."

He snatched a towel to wipe some more vomit from his sleeve, got up, scooped up the debris on the floor to finally deposit it in the biohazard container, and pulled his fifth pair of gloves from the attachment.

Peter was still shaking, whether in shock or with cold, and Hesam pulled a blanket over his legs, as well as giving 4 mg of Zofran for the nausea. It wasn't much, but in the absence of morphine, it was all he could do to make Peter feel at least a little less miserable. His partner's eyes were half-closed, and it was plain he was on the verge of passing out. While Hesam could see how this would have to seem welcoming to Peter, he couldn't allow him to.

"Peter," he said, gently shaking him. "I need you to stay with me, OK? We're working on that blood pressure." The fluid was running fast; for the first time in ten minutes, the numbers on the monitor had climbed slightly. Hesam peeled off the blood-soaked abdominal pads and applied new ones; blood was still seeping from the wound, although considerably less than it had been. He was relieved to see that it was still red in colour, not the diluted, watery pink that would have meant that the Ringer's had gone straight through. He'd never had it happen to him, thankfully, but he'd heard horror stories of medics who had run too much fluid into trauma patients, effectively flushing any remaining blood out of their veins with too much saline.

He dared to hope that, if his pressure continued to climb, they'd be able to give Peter some pain medication soon. He knew they'd knock him out anyway once they reached the ED, but until then, he wasn't keen on Peter crashing on him.

Simon's voice came back through the hatch. "Medical Control needs his blood pressure."

Hesam gnawed his lower lip. Peter's face was white, and by now, he was sobbing in pain.

"62 over 39," Hesam said. "But tell them we've got a large-bore trauma line running wide on Ringer's."

"Two if needed," Karen amended, neatly depositing the needle in the sharps box.

"Order denied," Simon reported back a few seconds later. "His pressure is too low."

Karen's raised eyebrows nearly crept into her hairline, eloquently saying, _I told you so_.

"Let me talk to them," Hesam said, getting over to the doghouse window. They knew him; depending on who the doctor on the other end was, they'd probably allow him to use his own discretion on when to give the pain meds.

Karen had returned her attention to Peter, who had started shaking violently, his respiratory rate increasing as his blood oxygen dropped.

"Hesam." Karen's voice was quiet and urgent, calling him back in a tone that sent a shiver down his spine. Her eyes were fixed on the cardiac pattern on the monitor, which had turned into a feebly zig-zagging line as Peter's eyes rolled back and he went into v-fib, uncoordinated cardiac activity from which the heart couldn't break on its own.

Hesam had told Simon earlier that he might have to shock Peter, but he hadn't actually been able to imagine himself doing so.

He stared at Karen, then at the now-unconscious Peter, for what seemed like a minute although it couldn't have been more than three seconds, then he nodded at her to get to the biotech case, while he set the defibrillator paddles to Peter's chest, and set the charge to 200 joules.

"Slow it down for a sec," Karen shouted to Simon in front.

"Clear," Hesam told Karen.

Peter's body arched, and Hesam took some small comfort in the knowledge that, at least, he wasn't feeling any more pain.

The squiggly pattern on the monitor levelled into a flat line. "Asystole," Hesam said, in a clipped tone. "Epi."

Karen had already pulled up a milligram of epinephrine, and Hesam watched her pushing it through the IV line. He began to ventilate with the ambu-bag.

"Get him on a board," Karen said.

Hesam got the short board out from under the bench and slid it under Peter's upper body. All the while, he kept staring at the monitor for a rhythm to return, for the heart to reset itself, for anything. But aside from a weak twitching on the monitor as the epi hit him, Peter remained asystole.

Hesam started compressions. "Atropine," he said, in the same flat tone.

He heard the sirens howling, heard the sound of the monitor, the short, artificial _blip_ whenever he pressed down on Peter's chest, heard Karen telling Simon to patch to the hospital that they were coming in with a full arrest, and felt as if he was sleepwalking.

Press. _Blip_.

Press. _Blip_.

Press. _Blip_.

"Come on," he heard Karen say as she pushed the atropine through. "Come on."

Hesam didn't say anything. He stopped compressions to stare at the flat line on the monitor.

Come on, he thought fiercely. Come on. We've got a large-bore line running full. That's gotta count for _something_. Come _on_. Don't you do this to me, you goddamn son of a bitch. Gimme a rhythm here. _Please_.

He took up compressions again.

Press. _Blip_.

Press. _Blip_.

_Blip_.

Press. _Blip_.

_Blip_.

Hesam jerked back to stare at the monitor, just as Karen shouted at him to stop compressions.

_Blip. Blip. Blip_.

It was slightly irregular, and too slow, but it was as close to a sinus rhythm as Hesam could have hoped for.

Hesam laid two fingers against Peter's throat to search for the carotid pulse. At first he feared he was imagining it, but then he was sure he felt one. He nodded at Karen.

"We got him back," Karen breathed.

Hesam still didn't say anything. Peter hadn't started breathing again, so Karen kept bagging, while he checked the oxygen levels, the IVs, the dressings, the stretcher sheets, just to rule out as many risk factors as he could, all the while staring at the pattern on the monitor, as if by staring hard enough he could will it into a sinus rhythm.

He briefly considered intubating, but since Peter's airway was still free, and oxygen saturation was near 100 percent, he decided against it. It was another risk factor he simply didn't want to chance right now. That his last intubated patient had gone asystole immediately after passing the tube didn't help, either.

The cardiac pattern finally evened out into a regular sinus rhythm, at a pressure of 60 over 40, slowly, slowly climbing.

"He's trying to breathe." Karen was timing the rate at which she squeezed the ambu-bag to coincide with Peter's weak attempts to draw breath.

"We got him back," Hesam repeated, as if the realisation was only just sinking in, and he didn't quite dare to believe it yet.

"How long's he been gone?" Karen asked with a look at the monitor.

Half an hour, Hesam thought as he glanced at the paper strip.

"Thirty-five seconds," he said.


	5. Shellshocked

**5**

**Shell-shocked  
**

Peter's blood pressure was up again at 70 to 50 as they arrived at the hospital six minutes later, at the same time as unit Four Charlie. They were met by a full trauma room staff at the doors of the emergency entrance, while Anne and Nicholas wheeled their patient into the cardiac room, CPR still in progress.

Suddenly, they had several people helping them to wheel the stretcher, hold the IV bag, and ventilate. Seeing that Hesam had more assistance than necessary now, Karen peeled off to help Nicholas and Anne. The doctor who took over the ambu-bag from her was Dr Rossi, for which Hesam was grateful, because she was a hands-on, no-nonsense sort of person. There were far too many ER doctors who coped with emergencies a lot worse than any paramedic, but Laura Rossi was not one of them.

"What have we got?" Dr Rossi asked Hesam, as they rushed Peter inside.

"Witnessed shooting while on scene," Hesam told her, running along with the stretcher. "Two bullets, one to the shoulder, one to the abdomen. Fourteen gauge in both ACs; we got about 800 ml of Ringer's into him. At least 1.5 to 2 litres of blood loss. Hypovolaemic shock, entered ventricular fibrillation seven minutes ago, shocked into asystole, back in sinus rhythm after one round of epi and atropine, last BP reading 50 systolic. Lung sounds are good, no intubation attempted."

She peered beneath the abdominal pads covering the wound in Peter's stomach. "That the exit wound?"

"Yeah, it was at close range; both bullets went through."

She nodded. "Did anyone get his blood type?"

A nurse at the head of the stretcher answered, "Yes; B negative."

"I want a CBC and blood gases done. We'll just do an ultrasound scan; there's no time for a CT. Thanks," she said to Hesam.

They were in the trauma room, where he helped transfer Peter to the table before the staff descended on him. Hesam was gently ushered out again, so there he stood in the corridor, still soaking wet from the rain, his jacket caked with vomit and blood, feeling as if someone had suddenly pulled a plug from his brain.

At some point – it might have been a minute, or twenty – Karen walked up to him, and hugged him.

"Nick's gone back to get our rig on Eldridge," she told him. "I'll do the cleanup in yours, OK? Can I leave you with the paperwork?"

Hesam nodded numbly.

She hugged him again. "You did great," she told him. "You did everything right. Don't forget that."

He nodded again. Then he remembered something else.

"What happened to our patient?" he asked. "Our – other patient?"

"They called him dead on arrival. They never got a rhythm back." Her look was apologetic, although Hesam hadn't expected the man to survive. For just a fleeting second, he wondered what would have happened if they'd just left the Chinese man there on Eldridge, scooped up Peter, and run. But then he had to concede it wouldn't have mattered much. Maybe he'd just have held off coding until the trauma room.

Karen waited before going on, "And I guess Simon would appreciate a 'sorry' at some point. He worked like a mule back there, and he's pretty pissed at you."

Hesam blinked, as if he saw her there for the first time.

"Karen – I'm sorry," he said weakly.

"I said Simon. I can deal with being called an old woman. Mainly because I am." She gave him a tired smile and gently slapped his shoulder. "I'll check back after I've finished. To see how he's doing." She jerked her head to the closed trauma room doors, then looked him up and down. "You might try to clean yourself up a bit."

Hesam smiled lamely. "Yes, Mom."

She squeezed his arm again, and turned to go.

He was reluctant to leave, fully aware that Peter might code again in there any second, even if he told himself that there was nothing he could do if that happened.

After a while, he finally went to the EMT room, stuffed his jacket in the laundry, washed his face and hands, and got a fresh shirt from his locker, then sat down at the table with his run form, mechanically filling in the information.

_Pt. 28 y/o male, cauc., multpl. ballistic trauma, 1 GSW to shoulder, 1 to abdomen._

Hesam put down his pen and rubbed his eyes. He'd written hundreds, maybe thousands of run reports. He had never written up any that had sounded so wrong.

* * *

Hesam was back in the corridor on his way to the trauma room at a quarter to seven, after finishing and handing in his run form. As he approached, he saw that the doors were open, and an icy feeling washed over him at the thought of what this could mean.

He'd seen it before – the ones that had been beyond his ability to save, left on the operating table under a blanket, IVs withdrawn, tube still in place, monitor switched off, the very image of failure. He almost ran the last ten yards until he could see inside.

Nobody was there. There was blood here and there on the operating table as well as a few spatters on the floor, next to medical wrappers and other debris strewn over it. The trauma room looked every bit as the back of an ambulance after a trauma call. The operating table was empty.

This was good news, Hesam told himself, even though the queasy feeling in his gut wouldn't go away. It had been little more than half an hour since they'd rushed Peter in there. Even in a worst-case scenario, if he'd coded again that very minute and hadn't been brought back, they'd still be working him. They hadn't called him. They couldn't have.

He half-heartedly looked around for someone who could tell him more – half-heartedly because he still wasn't sure he wanted to know what had happened.

A nurse came past and saw him standing there, and was kind enough to explain. "They've taken him up to the surgery ward, five minutes ago, I think."

"You know anything else?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. But if he's up there by now and not down here, that probably means he's haemodynamically stable, at least."

He thanked her, and took the elevator up to the surgery ward. He was quickly told which operating theatre Peter was in, and settled to wait in another corridor, before another set of doors.

Hesam leant against the wall, then sat on a chair, got up again, walked back and forth a couple of times, and sat on the chair again, only to jump up once more several minutes later. Over the last sixteen hours, he'd taken a couple of naps in the driver's seat in between calls but hadn't slept otherwise. Still, although his eyes were burning with tiredness, and the bunkroom beckoned, he knew he couldn't have slept now.

It was the pointlessness of it all that got to him most. Those guys in the car had gone to great lengths to kill a man who had been almost dead anyway, and had possibly killed another just trying to help, whose only mistake had been standing in the way.

If he'd been religious, he'd have prayed. Being rather scientific-minded, he mentally went through the numbers. Peter had been gone for thirty-five seconds. Half a minute of oxygen depravation, alleviated at least slightly by CPR. In all likelihood, not enough for brain damage, so if he survived, he'd stand a chance of a full recovery. Only 10 per cent of asystolic patients made it to the hospital alive. Of those, statistically, only every third would make it out again. 50 per cent of patients coding once coded again later, with the chances of surviving dropping drastically.

Looking at it, being religious probably would have been the smarter choice.

No, he told himself. Peter wasn't a statistic. They'd taken some rather aggressive measures to compensate the blood loss, which had been the reason for the cardiac arrest in the first place, and with his blood pressure up again and stable now, he'd pull through.

He had to.

After about an hour, Hesam realised with a start that their shift was over. It was hard to imagine it had only started sixteen hours ago. He experienced a very brief, very remote moment of uneasiness at the idea that he probably should have gone out there again, or, at least, asked permission to head in, until he realised he couldn't have – it must have taken Karen ages to clean the rig.

Word had gone round that one of the paramedics attached to the hospital had been shot while on duty, and at irregular intervals, Hesam was joined by other personnel, mostly EMTs and paramedics in between calls, or a couple of nurses, sharing his lonely watch for a few minutes. None of them spoke much, conversations usually being limited to "Anything new?" – "No," accompanied by a pat on the shoulder. Anne Kraszewski was there at one point, as were Karen O'Neill and Nicholas Greentree and Jerry DuPont. Simon Blumenthal was nowhere to be seen.

After a while, however, he found that the "no" turned into a hopeful "no" rather than a foreboding "no". If Peter hadn't died yet, there was an increasing chance he wouldn't. At least that was what Hesam told himself.

He kept oscillating between the chair and his spot at the wall, walking back and forth between them, sometimes sitting, sometimes leaning, without really noticing what he was doing. In the ambulance, at least, he had been able to do something, had reeled down a routine that he had worked a few dozen times. Here and now, there was nothing at all he could do, and he felt utterly useless as well as helpless. There was a clock on a wall in a corridor around the corner, but after a while, Hesam didn't look at it any more.

The doors finally opened at a few minutes past nine. Hesam caught a glimpse of Peter, pale, unconscious, with an endotracheal tube in place, being wheeled past on a gurney. While this meant that he was alive, the tube, at least, was not a good sign, as it meant that they didn't trust him to breathe on his own yet. Hesam cast a helpless glance after the knot of people around the gurney, and then intercepted one of the nurses exiting the operating room.

She recognized him, so, thankfully, didn't need much persuasion to tell him the details. "He's stable," she said. "He sustained damage to internal organs, and the ruptured vena cava probably was what gave you the greatest trouble, but surgery was successful, though he'll need a CT scan and probably another surgery later. Dr Byrd decided to keep him on mechanical ventilation for the time being. Hopefully, he'll be able to do without by tonight."

"Any – signs of permanent damage?" Hesam asked.

She shook her head. "It's too early to tell," she said sympathetically. "We'll soon know."

"Where are you taking him?" Hesam wanted to know.

"Intensive care. – That's down on level 2," she added, with a slight smile at his expression. "I thought you worked here."

"I don't work here. I work out there. Unless my partner gets shot, all I get to see of this place is the ambulance bay, the ED, and the crappy soda machine in the EMT room."

He regretted his tone instantly, thinking of the way he'd treated Simon, and wondered how many of the Mercy Heights personnel would still be talking to him after today.

She told him she needed to be off, and left, but at least he was under the impression that she was giving him credit for an extremely stressful day.

Hesam remained in the corridor for another couple of minutes before he finally took the elevator down to level 2, and spent some time finding the right department. He didn't go into the room where Peter lay, but took some comfort simply watching Peter's vital signs on the monitor through the Plexiglas window for a while. They looked a lot better than they had at any point in the ambulance.

"Hesam?"

Hesam turned at the sound of a female voice, and saw Emma Coolidge coming from the elevator, her eyes wide as she hastened towards him. She cast a look through the window and turned back to Hesam. "Nurse Zhao just told me. You were there, weren't you? What happened?"

Hesam gave her a short account, but left out the details, such as Peter vomiting on him. These things were between patient and paramedic. Or, in this case, between partners.

"Did they get them, do you know?" Emma asked quietly when he had finished.

It took him a second to even understand the question. He had never wondered who the men in the pickup and been, or whether they'd been caught. It was an aspect of his job that simply didn't matter. What mattered was getting injured people to the hospital alive. And more often than not, he transported the bad guys just as he did the good guys, and simply didn't care which was which, because it was inconsequential for the task.

"I have no idea," he said truthfully.

Emma looked through the Plexiglas again. "Will he be OK?" she asked.

He was a medic, she had a degree in medicine, so they both knew that the answer wasn't that easy, but all he did was nod, and she didn't ask further.

"Did someone call his family?" she wanted to know.

Hesam cast her a puzzled glance. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. There was so much about the aftermath of an emergency that he'd never had to deal with. "Do they normally do that in triage?"

"They should."

Hesam had only met Peter's mother once last summer, when she had planned to meet him after work, only to find out that, just because a medic's shift ended at seven, it didn't mean he was free at seven. That night, it had nearly been half past eight. She'd never tried again.

Emma looked through the window uneasily, but didn't speak. "Hey," Hesam said, "I'll go ask if someone called, OK?"

She showed no reaction, and he mentally kicked himself. He gingerly tapped her shoulder, and repeated his words as she turned to face him.

Emma nodded, and looked him over. "You look terrible," she said.

Hesam gave a hollow laugh. "Why, thanks."

She shook her head. "I mean, how long have you been up?"

Before he could answer, he saw her glance past him at the corridor with a strange expression on her face, and turned to see what had distracted her.

Obviously, Angela Petrelli had been informed. She looked very composed as she approached, hardly any different than the only other time Hesam had met her, as if there was no difference in waiting for one and a half hours for her son to come off shift – or coming to see her son in Intensive Care after having been shot. Hesam felt uneasy around her, although he thought that it might have something to do with some remnants of Peter's blood and puke remaining on his pants and shoes. The same could not be true for Emma, but Hesam got the impression she was even less comfortable with the situation than he was.

Emma wished Angela Petrelli a very quick good morning, murmured that she needed to be at work, and excused herself, hurrying back to the elevators. Hesam awkwardly shook Angela's hand. He wasn't quite sure if she even remembered him. He wanted to tell her something reassuring, but there was nothing he could think of – recounting the whole story to Emma had been bad enough; Peter's mother was the last person he wanted to tell about the ordeal her son had just been through.

To Hesam's relief, she didn't seem to mind when he left her there, alone with her son.

He tiredly walked back and took the elevator down to ground level. Nurse Hammer was in there when he entered, and she gave him a sympathetic look and a pat on the shoulder.

He went back to the EMT room without really knowing what to do there. The room was empty. Hesam got himself a cup of coffee, drank half of it, and tipped the other half into the sink. He started slightly when he saw a diluted blood smear on the white ceramic surface, and scrubbed at it until it came off.

It could have been anyone's, he told himself.

He stood there for another quarter hour before he finally told himself to stop. It wouldn't help Peter if he kept prowling the hospital, waiting for news he didn't want to hear. The best news here was no news at all. Judging by the sympathetic glances and words he'd been given in the last few hours, he felt fairly sure someone would at least text him if something happened.

And he didn't think he could stand another pat on the shoulder.


	6. Awakening

**6**

**Awakening  
**

It wasn't until the following morning that Emma finally found Peter awake.

She had been up in Intensive Care briefly during her lunch break the previous day, but his mother had still been there, and Emma didn't feel up to meeting her just then. She still didn't know why Angela Petrelli had treated her with such open hostility the first time they had met. She supposed it somehow had to do with Peter showing up a short while later and smashing her cello, and ultimately, what had happened at the Carnival three days ago, but Peter had never had a chance to explain more fully.

When Emma had come to Peter's room that afternoon at half past five, Angela was gone, but Peter was still on mechanical ventilation, with a tube down his throat, which meant he was still heavily sedated.

She stayed with him for half an hour although he couldn't know she was there, watching his chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly with his shallow, slightly irregular breathing. Once or twice while she sat there, the oxygen unit took over, breathing for him when the intervals between his breaths became too long. She told herself that this was mostly due to his sedation, and his respiration rate would pick up once they cut back on the medication.

Her mother was on call that evening, and before Emma left, she asked her – unnecessarily – to send her a message if anything changed. No message came, but this sounded a lot more reassuring in retrospect than it did that night, as she half-expected her phone to buzz any second, knowing that her mother wouldn't call her for trifles, and fearing any messages.

She was at the hospital again very early the next morning, almost an hour early for work, and immediately took the elevator up to Intensive Care. She fought with herself for a moment before she approached the nurses' station, but told herself that, if there had been bad news, she would have heard before now.

It was the change of shift, so there were six or seven people there. One of them, a young man called Jake, had been on shift yesterday and had talked to her briefly; when he saw her, he came over, and she dared to ask: "How is he?"

He nodded. "He'll pull through. Dr Byrd extubated him earlier this morning and put him on moderate sedation; he was responsive when I checked on him half an hour ago. We haven't had any major complications, only what's to be expected given the nature of his injuries – some infection, and his oxygen levels still aren't where we'd like them – but overall, under the circumstances, he's doing pretty well. He's scheduled for another surgery this afternoon."

Emma nodded her thanks, not trusting herself to speak, and went on to Peter's room.

He looked hardly any different than he had the night before. The tube was gone, but he was still on oxygen through a non-rebreather mask. The only sounds visible in the room were faint tendrils of reddish colour issuing from the cardiac monitor at regular intervals.

Emma sat down beside him and lightly took his hand. They had removed one of the two IV lines that had been needed for pre-hospital fluid replacement, but he still had a new, smaller cannula in the back of his hand, in case another IV access was needed quickly in an emergency.

For a minute or two, she just sat there, not sure whether he was awake, or asleep, or still unconscious; then she gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and said quietly, "Hey. Can you hear me?"

Emma could feel his fingers moving slightly, and his eyes opened with some difficulty. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"What happened?" he asked. She found that, through the oxygen mask, she had difficulty reading his lips, although he had been speaking very slowly.

"You were shot. Over a day ago. You're at Mercy Heights now. Do you remember?"

Peter nodded.

"Hesam and Karen O'Neill got you here." She hesitated. "You coded on the way to the hospital. That's why they've been keeping you put under. You had us all really worried."

Peter gave another nod, and grimaced slightly.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

He closed his eyes again. _Hurts_, she saw him mouth.

Emma frowned as she checked the IV bag and the line in his left arm. "It's not supposed to."

He completely surprised her by giving a feeble smile. She could have sworn he had said, "Yes, it is," but that made absolutely no sense.

"I'll go get a nurse," she told him, and made to get up, but he weakly held her back.

"No," he said. "Stay. Please."

She shook her head, but sat back down again. "No need to play the hero," she told him in gentle disapproval.

"I wasn'."

"That I actually believe."

They were silent for a while. It seemed to take Peter some effort to speak, even though he didn't have to do more than move his lips. "Was my mother here?" he finally asked.

"Yes. Nearly all day yesterday." Emma felt slightly guilty at this – whatever their differences, it seemed unfair that Angela had spent almost the entire day here but Peter didn't even know.

Peter said something else, but this time, Emma didn't understand. She would have liked to just ignore it, and not have Peter repeat what he had said when it cost him so much effort, but the look he gave her told her it was important to him.

"What did you say?" she asked unhappily.

He closed his eyes for a second, swallowing with difficulty, and repeated one word.

"Claire?" she asked.

He gave a weak nod.

She tried to think of what he'd meant, of Claires she knew. There was a doctor called Claire Simmons at Mercy Heights, but she worked in a different ward.

Then it hit her as she remembered the newspaper article she had read last weekend. "The girl who jumped off the Ferris wheel?"

Another nod.

"You know her?"

Peter gave another feeble smile, and said something. His face screwed up in pain.

"She's – your niece?" Emma stared at him. "Does your mother know about her ability? Why isn't she here?"

Peter nodded again, as if to say yes to both her previous questions, and underline the last one.

Emma's mind raced. She knew Peter could take others' abilities, so if his niece were to come here, he would heal instantly. His mother knew this, too. So why hadn't she come here and brought Claire?

"Peter," she told him quietly. "I'm going to talk to your mother, all right? But first I'm going to find a nurse."

He looked as if he was going to put up an argument, but then closed his eyes in resignation.

Emma briefly squeezed his hand and left the room, and was back a minute later with a nurse, who checked the chart, and the monitor, and then consented to upping the dose of his medication.

Emma waited until they were alone again. Peter was looking more composed now, and very tired.

"I think," he finally said, very slowly, not opening his eyes, "that they can't find Claire."

"Probably," Emma said thoughtfully. "Where could we look for her? Where does she live? Or do you know anyone else who could help?"

She then realised that these were rather a lot of questions for someone who had just awakened from twenty-four hours of general anaesthesia.

"What can I do?" she rephrased her question.

Peter didn't answer. She could see that his blood oxygen levels dropped dangerously again before he took a shaky breath and opened his eyes a fraction.

"Peter," she said. "I'm going to see if I can find your mom, all right? We'll work something out. You need some sleep."

He nodded, and looked at her, with some obvious trouble focusing. Then he said one word she didn't understand.

"What was that?" Emma asked helplessly. She briefly considered finding pencil and paper, but then decided he'd have even more trouble writing anything down than she had understanding him through his mask.

Peter repeated the word, making an effort to speak clearly, but it made no sense to her whatsoever. It ended in something like –_ler_, but that was all she was sure of.

"It's OK." She saw him close his eyes again, and gently chafed his hand. "I'll go find your mother. I'll be back later."

He made no reply, only lay there with his eyes closed, his breathing shallow but even, fast asleep.

* * *

Emma went up to Intensive again one and a half hours later, and found Angela with Peter. Angela sat with her back to the Plexiglas window, stroking her son's hair, but he seemed to be still asleep.

Emma drew a deep breath, and opened the door.

Angela turned, with the same unreadable expression that she always seemed to wear. It unnerved Emma more than it would have other people, since she had nothing but expression to go by if she wanted to judge someone's mood.

Finally, Angela rose, and extended a hand. "Emma, is that right?" she said.

"Yes." Emma shook Angela's hand. "It's good to see you."

"I owe you an a…" Angela began, then ended the handshake and turned away from Emma again, obviously still talking, but Emma couldn't see what she was saying.

Emma's initial reaction was irritation that Peter hadn't told his mother that she was deaf, but her second thought was that he probably hadn't told his mother because, to him, that simply hadn't mattered.

Emma lightly touched Angela's shoulder and advanced a few steps to be able to see her face again. Angela had stopped talking and was looking at Emma with arched eyebrows.

"I'm deaf," Emma said simply, with a disarming little smile. "I need to see your face."

Angela looked at her for a few moments, and hardly missed a beat before she said, "I owe you an apology. Peter probably told you that I had… a premonition concerning you, and I regret to say I misjudged it."

Emma cocked her head. Angela wasn't going out of her way to speak clearly, but clear enunciation seemed to be her usual way of speaking, so the younger woman was having little trouble adjusting.

"No, Peter didn't tell me. There was no time before he… before this happened."

Angela looked at her son again, then turned to Emma. "Did you talk to him?"

"Yes. This morning. He was still very weak."

Angela stroked Peter's hair until she looked back again. "What did he say?" she asked, not directly looking at Emma.

Emma came closer. "I promised him I would talk to you. He mentioned his niece. Claire."

Emma could see Angela giving a bitter little laugh. "Of course. I tried to call her the instant I got the call from the hospital. But she isn't answering her phone. Neither is her father. I can't say I'm surprised, given that the whole country is going to be swarming over her after what she did at the Carnival, but this certainly is a bad time to drop off the face of the earth."

"Peter guessed something like this," Emma offered.

"You know," Angela said, finally looking at her again, "it's good to hear that he talked, and was coherent enough for all this."

"Yes." Emma looked down at her hands. "I'm sorry you haven't been able to talk to him yet."

Angela turned back to Peter, and there was a minute of silence.

"He said something else," Emma finally went on. "Something I couldn't figure out." She went around the bed, to be able to see Angela across it. "I asked him if there was anything else I could do, or anyone he could think of who could help. He said a word – I didn't understand him. I think it ended in –_ler_. I didn't get the first part." Emma looked at Angela intently. "You have any idea what he meant?"

Angela made no reaction, just staring at her son's still face. Emma considered repeating her question, but then decided to wait.

"Yes, I know whom he meant," Angela finally said. "Sylar."

"Sylar?" Emma repeated, to make sure she had got it right this time.

"His real name is Gabriel Gray. He has a watchmaker's shop in Brooklyn."

Emma could tell how difficult it was for Angela to tell her this, even if she didn't know why that was. She waited for Angela to continue, but when nothing came, she asked, "Can he heal too? Like Claire?"

"Yes," Angela said. "Just like Claire."


	7. Lost and found

**7**

**Lost and found**

"How are the tortellini?"

Claire forced a smile, as well as another forkful. "OK."

Noah gave her that fixed grin that told her he was completely aware that she found the tortellini as disagreeable as the rest of her situation, and that he was still trying to pretend that it was a wonderful father-daughter adventure to be sitting in a motel, eating a breakfast of takeaway food from Styrofoam containers and plastic forks, after nearly three days of being on the road, with probably another forty-eight hours ahead of them until they reached the west coast.

"You know," Noah finally went on, in a conversational tone that didn't fool her, "I was thinking about making a stop in Odessa later today."

"And that just came to you like that."

"No, of course it didn't." Of course it hadn't. Claire had suspected there had to be a reason why they had driven so far south, instead of taking a more direct route across the States. And she couldn't say she was surprised to find out why her father had opted to drive through Texas.

"Dad, who do you think you're kidding? Do you have a plan, or are we just going to drive across America until I'm twenty-one?"

His face was serious. "There have been times over the last few days where I seriously considered that as an option."

Claire picked at her tortellini, and waited.

"I want to pick up a couple of things in Odessa. Things to help us disappear if we have to – false IDs, that sort of thing. And a couple of files, to help us know the enemy."

Claire raised her eyebrows. "You mean that there are still files at Primatech after they've been popping up all over the country for some time now?"

For the first time, Noah looked irritable. "Claire, I'm not worried about your face on the front cover of _Time_ magazine. I'm not worried about being swarmed by the press, although it's not something I'm keen on. I'm worried about what others might do to you for exposing people with powers. There are those who wouldn't want to go public, for various reasons. And don't tell me about you being invulnerable."

Claire, who had been about to tell him she was invulnerable, said nothing.

Yes, she could understand he was worried. Yes, she could even say he was right to some degree. So had Peter – they had no idea where this might lead. But the fact remained that, instead of going public with her abilities and finally be done with all the lies she'd been forced to live for so long, she was back to the worst possible outcome, running, hiding, secret identities.

She was so fed up with it.

They finished their meal in silence, and deposited the remains – Styrofoam containers, plastic cutlery, and quite a fair amount of uneaten tortellini – in the garbage.

"It's nice not having to do the dishes, right?" Noah said, in a forced attempt at fraternisation.

She smiled, and nodded, standing up to get her bag, in search of some mints to get rid of the taste in her mouth.

She found the candy, but missed something else. Frowning, she dug around in her bag, finally upturning the contents on the bed.

"Dad, have you seen my cell somewhere?"

"No?"

She checked the pockets of her coat. "I haven't used it in the last two days, have I?"

Noah thought hard. "I thought I'd seen it lying on the dressing table yesterday, in that place in Arkansas."

She looked at him with a puzzled expression. "I'm pretty sure I haven't used it."

"Then I probably confused the places, and I saw it last in Brooklyn."

"It's not here." She frowned as she checked her bag, her case, and again her pockets.

"Maybe you forgot it there." He finished packing away the last of his things. "Who'd you have called?"

"Nobody. I just wonder where it is."

"We can just phone the Brooklyn place, and ask if they found it. The number should be on the bill. It's in the bottom of my case; I'll look for it tonight."

Claire gave him another smile that she hoped looked less forced than the last few. "Sounds fine. Let's go."

* * *

"I'll just go drop this off at the reception desk and restock, OK? Can you remake the stretcher?"

"Sure, go right ahead."

Hesam nodded at Shannon Kemper, and snatched his last run report to drop off with the nurses at the reception desk. Before he went to the supply room, however, he took a glance at his watch, and decided he had time to quickly take the elevator up to the Intensive Care Unit, and check on Peter.

Shannon, who was teamed up with him today, already knew why he usually took a few minutes longer than usual whenever he went into the hospital.

Hesam hadn't been very lucky today. He'd been up to see Peter before the shift had started, but he hadn't been conscious then. When he'd come in again around noon, he'd heard that Peter had been awake for some time, but when Hesam got there, he was asleep again.

This time, he wasn't sure whether to call it luck or not. As the elevator doors opened, Hesam had to step out of the way as, just then, a nurse was wheeling a gurney towards the elevator, and a second glance at it told Hesam, with a sinking feeling, that lying on it was Peter. He had known that Peter was scheduled for another surgery later today, but hadn't known exactly when.

"Hey, can you hold open the door, please?" the nurse called out to him.

"Yeah," Hesam said. "I'm not getting out after all." He stood aside as the nurse pulled the gurney in, and looked uncomfortable. "He's having another surgery?" He suddenly realised how deeply unnerving he found any part of hospital routine that took place beyond the Emergency Department. It was so close to what he was doing in his job, and yet so totally different.

The nurse looked at him strangely, until he seemed to recognize him, or work out who he must be.

"Ah, you work with him, right? Yeah, he's due for another one. Can you hit third floor for me please?"

Hesam pushed the button for "Third floor – Surgery", then looked at Peter, and was surprised to see that his eyes were open.

"Hey," Peter said thickly. He seemed to have difficulty speaking, and Hesam deduced that he was again rather heavily sedated.

"Hey, man," Hesam replied quietly. "You hang in there, OK?"

Peter gave a weak nod, closing his eyes again. "Yeah."

With an encouraging if slightly strained smile, Hesam briefly touched his knuckles to Peter's, a gesture which felt completely out of place with one of the two people involved lying flat on his back. Hesam then stood back again as the nurse wheeled Peter out of the elevator, watching them until they were out of sight.

His mind was still up in the surgery ward when he reached the ambulance, and got into the driver's seat.

"This yours?" Shannon asked him by way of greeting.

Hesam looked at the grey cell phone she was holding out to him, and took it from her.

"No." He frowned. "I don't even have mine with me. Where did you find it? In the back?"

"No, it was wedged underneath the backrest of the passenger's seat."

Hesam turned it in his hands. "I think it may be Peter's, actually," he said slowly. "Must have fallen out of his pocket on Sunday."

Shannon cast him a sympathetic glance. "Did you talk to him?"

Hesam gave a bitter chuckle. "Yeah. Sort of. He was on his way to surgery when I went up. I managed to tell him to hang in there. When we're done here, he'll probably still be knocked out. If they've finished patching him up by then, that is."

"What exactly will they be doing?"

"No idea. I didn't ask." _Because I don't want to know._

She looked at him, clearly at a loss at what to say.

Hesam pocketed Peter's phone, then started the engine and picked up the mike. "059 here, we're clear."

* * *

It was strange to be back in Odessa.

To see that same old town just lying there as if nothing had happened, the same as it had always been, when Claire's life had so completely changed.

If her father felt the same way, he didn't show it, but Claire suspected that his feelings probably were a lot different from hers. For her, even though it had all started here, Odessa was the place where life had been comparatively simple. For Noah, it had always also been that place where he had led a double life between family man and Company man.

He didn't drive straight to Primatech, but went for a motel downtown. It was late afternoon, normally too early to find a place to stay for the night, so Claire assumed that Noah was planning to spend some time at his former workplace.

He left her some money to get something to eat, and made to leave.

"I'll be back in two hours at the latest. Be careful, OK?"

She nodded, and he went out.

Claire sighed, glad that he hadn't made her promise him she would stay at the motel. She would have hated to lie to him.

She took the money, and the motel key, waited for a quarter hour, and left the motel.

She spent some time just walking along aimlessly, her coat open, as it was a lot warmer here than it had been in New York City. She avoided larger gatherings of people, particularly young people, as someone would surely have recognised her. She longed to go into her favourite milkshake place to pick up a chocolate milk, but somebody would definitely have known her there, so she didn't.

She found herself wandering over to the school grounds. It was not completely deserted, even though even most of the afternoon activities would be over by now, so she remained careful not to walk into any scattered pairs or small groups of students, even though she could tell, from a distance, that there was nobody there that she knew. A couple of the kids looked so small.

She sat down on a bench near the stadium, watching a couple of smaller girls playing soccer on a lawn, lost in her own thoughts.

What was she going to do? Most of all, she wanted to be back in a place where people knew who and what she was, and were willing to support her. Right now, that was either Arlington, or New York. It would be nice to be back with Gretchen, though after her revelation, life at college would never be the same again. While she would have been fine with just waiting to see where it all would lead, she realised that Gretchen would not be the greatest help at this time. Which left Peter.

Even though Peter had not agreed with her actions at the Carnival, she still felt he was the closest confidant she had. Plus, he was one of the few people who, with any consistency, treated her like an adult, and whatever the future held, facing it as an adult would be far preferable to being carted across the States by her father.

She sat there until the sun went down, without really being able to reach a decision of what she was going to do. After a while, she sighed, rose from her seat, and slowly started to walk back. She wasn't worried that her father might have come home in the meantime, and sure enough, when she reached the motel, she didn't see her father's car anywhere.

As she crossed the parking lot, she had a vague feeling that she wasn't alone. Feeling scared even though she told herself she had no reason to, she looked around, then quickened her steps until she reached the lobby. There was nobody to be seen.

She walked up to their room, turned on the lights, and then spent a few minutes watching the parking lot through the half-closed curtain. Everything was dark, and quiet.

She looked around the rather bleak room, which had a TV in the corner, but there didn't seem to be a remote control, and the panel on the TV wouldn't open. A look inside the TV guide told her there was nothing interesting on anyway.

Then she remembered that her father had bought a newspaper the previous day. She opened his case in search for it when she heard a distinct _pock_ from the direction of the window.

Her head whipped around, staring at the window, but the curtain was still closed.

Heart beating wildly, she waited.

_Pock_.

It was strange how paralysed one could feel when it came to something as simple as drawing the curtain from a window.

_Pock_.

Claire went over to the window in two steps, so she couldn't change her mind along the way, and ripped open the curtain.

A stone, slightly larger than the last three, landed on the windowpane right in front of her nose as she stared. _Pock_.

She stared down into the parking lot, where a figure, hard to discern as he was backlit by a streetlamp, was just bending down to pick up another stone. He straightened, and pulled back to throw, but didn't follow through when he saw that the curtain had been drawn aside. He lowered his hand.

Claire squinted, and then she opened the window.

"_Zach_?"

The figure down there made no reply, but she could have sworn she saw him grinning.

"What are you doing?" she called.

He laughed, his voice familiar, even if it seemed to belong to such a remote time in her life. "Throwing stones at your window?" he shouted back.

Claire now laughed as well. Her room was on the second floor, but there was a car port right underneath her window. "Come up here!" she shouted.

He looked around, saw the car port, seemed to assess the best route, and started climbing up to her until he squeezed himself through the open window.

Now, standing in the light, she saw that he had changed, but not much. His trademark headphones were gone, as was the fuzzy goatee on his chin, as if he had finally accepted that he looked more grown-up without it, but the slightly sardonic grin he gave her as he looked her up and down was just as she remembered it.

"So," Zach said. "Jumping for a larger audience now, huh? I always thought _filmsbyzach_ had the exclusive rights for that kind of thing."

Claire smiled. "Hey, you were the one who told me to embrace my inner freak. Remember?"

* * *

Hesam took another of his many detours into the hospital at a quarter past six, forty-five minutes before his and Shannon's end of shift, but he knew better than to ask for permission to come in early. Supervisor Jackson was on duty today, and he never let you finish before your scheduled end of shift.

He headed past the nurses' station on his way to the ICU, when he caught one of the nurses giving him a strange look, one that made his gut go cold.

"What?" he asked, turning around and coming back, dreading the answer.

"It's Peter." The nurse caught his expression of alarm and was quick to add, in a soothing way that wasn't reassuring at all to Hesam, "There was some complication with the surgery. He's back on mechanical ventilation; they're keeping him put under again as a precaution."

Hesam nodded his thanks, his jaw working as he slowly walked back to the ambulance bay.


	8. Absolution

**8**

**Absolution  
**

Emma was sitting in a taxi bound for Brooklyn when she received a text message from her mother, saying Peter's condition had deteriorated after he had suffered hypovolaemic shock during surgery.

The cab was going excruciatingly slowly. She'd left immediately after work, and since an overwhelming percentage of New Yorkers had similar office hours, the entire city seemed to be on the streets. From seeing his face the rearview mirror, and from the way his jaw was moving, Emma knew that the cabbie hadn't stopped talking for even half a minute since she had entered his taxi. As her headphones apparently didn't deter him, Emma had decided not to tell him that she was deaf. He didn't seem to mind whether she was listening or not.

And anyway, from her experience, a lot of taxi drivers didn't believe you if you told them you were deaf, thinking you just took the easy way of a conversation.

She sat staring out of the window into the rain-grey street, clogged up with traffic, wishing there was any way she could get to this Gabriel Gray faster, fearing that by the time she got there, his shop would have closed and he would be gone. It was ironic, she thought, that she could at least have tried to "call" him using her ability even though she didn't know what he looked like – if only Peter hadn't destroyed her cello.

When they were about ten blocks out, Emma paid the driver, stepped out into the rain, and walked the rest of the way on foot. She was soaking wet by the time she arrived at the address Angela had given her, but hardly felt it.

The quarter looked run-down, as did the little shop in the middle of the street, with an aged-looking sign saying "_Gray and Sons_" over the entrance. For a second, Emma thought she was indeed too late, because everything looked dark inside. Then she saw that, while it was dim, there was still light in the shop.

A wild rain of colour erupted over her head as she entered the shop, and she looked up in bewilderment until she realised it was a chime she had set off. The room she had entered was full of watches and clocks of every shape and size, as well as antique furniture, bookshelves and decorative quartz crystals.

There was nobody in the shopfront, but she saw another light in a back room.

"Hello? Mr Gray?" she called, just as someone appeared in the doorway.

Without really thinking about it, Emma had expected a small, stooped, mousy, middle-aged or elderly man, not the tall young man that now entered the room – much less the man she had met less than a week before, who had saved her from being manipulated by Eric Doyle.

"You?" she said, stunned.

He gave her a wide smile as he took off a pair of glasses with multiple magnifying lenses. "Emma," he said. "I didn't expect to see you here."

* * *

"So that's about it," Claire was saying. She and Zach had sat down opposite each other on the two beds in the motel room. "I exposed my abilities to the world and now I'm hiding from the consequences."

Zach frowned. "That doesn't really sound like you. Hiding from consequences or running from anyone."

She gave a bitter laugh. "I guess I don't really know what's me anymore."

"So what are you gonna do?"

Claire thought about this.

"I want to go back," she finally said. "My dad… he's been trying to protect me. Even you got your share of that a while back. But you're right. Hiding and running isn't my thing. I don't know _what_ my thing is. But I won't find out if I just keep running away."

"Need anyone to create a diversion for your dad?" Zach asked with a sardonic grin.

Claire laughed. "Actually, this time, I'd prefer not to run." Her stomach growled, and she remembered that she hadn't eaten much since the dismal tortellini outside Dallas. "But before that, I want to know if Enzo's still has those fantastic Quattro Formaggi. Can I borrow your phone?"

He cocked his head. "What's wrong with yours?"

Claire didn't quite know what he was trying to say. "I can't find it, that's what."

Zach leant to the side and looked past her at Noah's bed. "And what's that? You're not telling me your father has a pink cell phone, right?"

Claire followed his glance, and looked behind her, where the contents of her father's case were still strewn across the bedspread after she had dropped it.

There, sure enough, lay her phone. She had just shoved everything back against the wall a few minutes ago without really looking at all the things that had fallen out of the bag, and had completely missed her phone lying there innocuously, waiting to be found.

With a puzzled expression, she took it, and was surprised to see it was switched off. She was sure he hadn't done anything of the sort.

"What?" Zach asked.

"My dad. He took away my phone." Claire stared at the display telling her she had fifteen missed calls. Most of them were from college friends including Gretchen, several more from her mother and Lyle, two were from her grandmother.

"I don't believe this," Claire said, shaking her head. "He told me he saw it in Brooklyn. He was hiding it, and lying to me about it."

Zach was watching her intently. "So what are you going to do?"

She grimaced. "First, I'm not going to buy him a Quattro Formaggi from Enzo's."

* * *

"I'd never have expected you to… repair watches," Emma said, looking around the shop bemusedly.

Sylar looked at her in a way that she wondered whether she had said something wrong, but then he just replied, "It helps me clear my mind when I have something to think about." He took in her sodden clothes and hair. "But you must be freezing. Let me—"

She shook her head, as there were much more important matters right now. "I'm here because of Peter."

"Peter?" he asked. She found she had difficulty reading his expression, if not his lips; he was similar to Angela in terms of what might be on in his mind. If that was possible, Emma found him even harder to figure out than Peter's mother.

"He asked me to find you. He needs your help. He was shot during a call on Monday morning. He's at Mercy Heights Hospital at the moment."

Sylar stared into space for a moment, and didn't look at her when he said, as if to himself, "Funny that he asks _me_ for help." Emma was fairly sure she knew what he meant this time, and decided mentioning that Claire was not available would have been a bad idea.

"His mother told me you could heal." She hesitated, realising that there was something odd here – she knew that Sylar had used an ability to save her from Doyle, which had looked like being able to move objects with the power of his mind, something that probably wouldn't help Peter a lot right now. But what she had seen him use was definitely not healing. So either he had more than one ability, or he could switch his, like Peter.

"Angela told you where to find me?" he asked.

"Yes." She had been able to gather, from Angela's expression, that there was something between her and Sylar, something serious. She wondered whether Sylar would refuse to help. "You can heal? You could give Peter that ability, too?"

He seemed to shake off something, and nodded, looking truly concerned for the first time now. "Yes. How serious is he?"

"Very serious," she replied, with a slight lisp before she remembered again to watch her enunciation. She couldn't remember when she had last had to talk so much, and to so many different people, at least not since breaking off her residency.

"Then we'd better leave at once."

"Thank you…" She hesitated. "What should I call you?"

He gave her a strange look with a smile that could have been sardonic, or sad, she couldn't quite decide. "Sylar… or Gabriel. Whichever works for you."

On the way, they didn't talk much. There were so many things Emma didn't understand and would have liked to ask, but she felt that she had no business to pry.

It was already past 7 PM when Emma and Sylar arrived at Mercy Heights Hospital. Emma led the way up to the Intensive Care Unit on the second floor where Peter lay.

"Intensive Care?" Sylar asked, looking troubled. She was surprised that he seemed to know his way around here so well.

As they walked along the corridor, Emma wondered for the first time what was about to happen. After seeing Peter so badly hurt for two days, it was hard to imagine him just healing and walking off. And there, she realised, also for the first time, lay the next problem. Half the hospital knew about Peter. If he just jumped up from his bed now, he would have a lot of things to explain.

She became aware that Sylar slowed his steps as they approached the right room, and saw that Angela was still there with Peter. He looked even paler than he had that morning, obviously deeply unconscious.

Emma was walking behind Sylar as they entered, so she couldn't see his face, only saw his jaw move as he said something short. Angela seemed to look slightly past him, not gracing whatever he had said with an answer. There was an expression of carefully veiled disgust on her face as Sylar sat down at the left side of Peter's bed, opposite Angela. Emma chose to stand close to the wall near the foot end of the bed, which allowed her to be unobtrusive, as well as enabling her to see both Sylar's and Angela's faces, if at an angle.

Sylar now turned his attention from Angela to Peter, taking his limp hand.

Emma watched.

She wasn't sure what she had expected, but whatever it was, it should have been more dramatic, because nothing at all happened.

She watched the monitor for any sign of improvement, watched Peter's face, expecting his colour to recover, his respiratory rate to pick up, anything at all, but he just lay there as he had before.

"Why's it not working?" she asked, quietly, but both Angela and Sylar started, as if they had already forgotten about her being there.

"Because Peter has to take an ability consciously." Angela continued to look at nothing in particular. "And right now, he can't."

Sylar's expression told Emma that he had expected the outcome, although he had probably hoped for a different one.

"He didn't take mine consciously," she threw in. "When he did, he hadn't expected it to happen."

"Still, he wasn't unconscious at the time, was he?" Angela answered snappishly, still not looking directly at Emma, and the younger woman didn't even have to hear her voice to be able to tell she was cross. Emma made no reply.

Sylar remained sitting for a few moments before he got up. Emma saw him give Angela a look that seemed almost pained. "I'm sorry," she saw him say.

Angela finally looked up at the tall man, her face as fixed as it had been, as if he had just wandered into her field of vision without anyone's doing.

"You may find absolution from every person on this planet, but you never will from me." She turned away from him and towards her son again, before finishing, "I don't blame you for failing to help Peter."

Sylar stood there for a few heartbeats, then he turned and left. Emma was reluctant to go, unhappy with her failure to do anything to help Peter, and unwilling to just leave now.

Angela, however, seemed to have completely forgotten that she was there, so she slowly turned as well after a while, leaving Peter there with his mother, both equally motionless.

Sylar was still in the corridor some twenty yards away when Emma emerged from the room, leaning against a wall with a brooding expression on his face. He turned to look at her as she walked towards him.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "When I realised he might not be conscious, I should have told you I suspected that it wasn't going to work."

"You tried," she said.

He nodded.

"I can send you a message when he comes to."

He gave a humourless laugh. "I'm not sure Angela could bear it if I saved Peter."

Emma frowned. "Why does she treat you that way?"

Sylar looked past her, his expression wistful. "We have what you might call a… complicated history." He held out his hand. "If anything happens, let me know, OK?"

Emma took his hand, and nodded.

* * *

Hesam entered the EMT room after his shift with his shoulders hunched, wishing nothing more than to become invisible. Everybody seemed to know that Peter's surgery had gone badly, and everybody seemed to have the profound wish to tell him how sorry they were, pretty much every time they saw him. Hesam just wanted to hand in the keys and radios and be gone. What would have helped was being able to go up and see Peter, but with his mother there, there was no way Hesam was going to intrude.

When he entered, the room was almost empty. His initial feeling of relief faded fast when he saw who the only person in the room was. Simon Blumenthal was just taking a fresh shirt from his locker, and seemed to freeze when he saw Hesam.

For a split second, Hesam wanted to just stick his head in the sand and flee, pretending he hadn't seen Simon, but then he realised that if he did that, the other man probably would never talk to him again, and rightly so.

At least with Simon, he was in little danger of being patted on the shoulder, which was definitely worth something these days.

"Hey man," he said heavily.

"Hey," Simon replied. It was the most guarded "hey" Hesam had ever heard in his life.

"Look, I…" Hesam took a deep breath. "Simon, I'm sorry."

Simon pretended to be very busy with the buttons of his shirt, the sidelong glance he threw Hesam saying, _just keep it coming_.

"I just snapped, OK?" Hesam went on. "I really thought you'd been there well over five minutes and had gotten so little done. It felt like ages to me. I didn't realise how you'd been working until I got our run times from dispatch. You did everything right. Peter'd probably be dead without you. I was being a complete asshole. OK?"

Simon finally jerked up his head, exhaling explosively. "Yeah, you were."

"I'm sorry."

Simon hesitated for another few seconds, until he finally made a small step towards Hesam, clapping him on the shoulder. "It's OK, man. Thanks."

He nodded at him once again, tucked in his shirt, and left.

Well, Hesam reflected, that hadn't gone too badly. He'd had to admit to being an asshole, plus he had got a pat on the shoulder he totally hadn't anticipated, but all in all, the day hadn't been a complete waste.

He went through to the supervisor's office, handed in the radios and ambulance keys, and was just about to head home when a phone rang in his pocket.

He started, since he rarely took his own phone to work, until he remembered that it was Peter's.

By reflex, he took it out and took a look at it. The name on the display read, _Claire_.

Claire.

Under normal circumstances, Hesam would never have answered a call that wasn't intended for him, but the circumstances were hardly normal.

He pressed the "call" button. "Hello?"

There was a pause at the other end, then a very young-sounding, female voice asked, "Who's that?"

"Hesam. I'm a friend of Peter's."

"Hesam? You're his co-worker, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Why isn't he answering?"

"Because," Hesam said very slowly, "he really, desperately needs your help, Claire."


	9. Brave New World

**9**

**Brave New World  
**

"Claire, do you have _any_ idea at all what would happen if you just walked in there and showed people that you can heal others as well?"

Noah had caught up with them at the train station, after Claire had insisted on leaving a message for her father where they were going, and why. She had found it very slightly ironic that he had tried to call her on her phone when he had found the message. She hadn't answered it.

"I don't care, Dad. I'm going to New York City, and the only way you can stop me is by locking me up." She resisted the urge to stick out her chin defiantly at these words, looking at him levelly instead.

Zach, who had been trying to unobtrusively vanish into the wall he'd been leaning against, disengaged himself from it and spoke up for the first time since Noah's arrival. "Mr Bennet, the guy could be dying."

These words stopped Noah short more effectively than anything else had, and Zach found the confidence to go on, "I guess we can agree that you both don't want that. So maybe you can work from there."

Claire cast him a grateful look for finding the common denominator in this, and said to her father, "If there was any alternative, I'd be all ears. But right now, all I want to do is to get to Peter as quickly as I can. It's going to take long enough as it is."

Noah's mouth was a thin line as he shook his head. "How are you going to explain to a hospital full of people – who _know_ Peter – how he miraculously returned from death's door? You being the girl who everyone with a TV saw fall from a Ferris wheel the week before without a scratch on her?"

She looked at him calmly. "To be honest, Dad – just like that. By telling the truth."

Noah shook his head. "You'd be lucky even to make it out of the hospital again without someone dissecting you to find out how that works."

"I'll probably find myself donating a lot of blood."

"Claire, I'm serious!"

"You think I'm not?"

Zach was edging closer to the wall again as he watched father and daughter staring at each other, neither blinking an eye.

Finally, Noah looked away, and with an abrupt movement, got out his phone.

"I'll see when the next flight to New York goes."

* * *

Wednesday was Hesam's day off, but he was back at Mercy Heights again early the next morning, even though he didn't have much of an idea of what the day would bring.

When he entered Peter's ICU room, he was slightly taken aback to find the sleeping form of Angela Petrelli leaning sideways in a chair by the bed. He noted that she managed to look dignified even in such a position.

She jerked awake as Hesam came in, orienting herself momentarily.

"I'm sorry," he said uneasily. "I didn't… mean to disturb."

She smoothed down the skirt of her suit and cast a glance over to Peter. Hesam noted he was off the mechanical ventilation once more.

"Don't worry," she said in an airy tone that didn't quite match the dark circles under her eyes. "It wasn't the best of places to fall asleep at any rate."

"How is he?" Hesam asked quietly.

"Breathing." She smoothed back a strand of dark hair behind her ear and then stood up. "Claire will be here around noon, she told me."

He nodded, deciding against asking again whether she knew what exactly Claire could do to help him when she got here. When he had come up the previous night to tell her about her granddaughter's phone call, he had got the impression that Claire's presence would make all the difference, though she hadn't disclosed why.

She seemed to consider for a moment, before turning towards him and holding out her hand. "Look after him for me, will you, Mr Malek?"

Hesitantly, Hesam took her hand, and shook it. "Of course, Mrs Petrelli."

She held the handshake for a moment, then added, "He's been very lucky to have you."

Hesam shook his head, waving off the praise. "He's been lucky to have _any_ medical assistance near."

Her face twisted into a smile, clearly saying, _that's what I said_, nodded at him, and left.

Hesam was left in the ICU, looking at Peter's vital signs and wishing he had Angela Petrelli's faith in the future.

Peter awoke around half an hour later, or rather, Hesam became aware that he was awake half an hour later.

"Hey, buddy," Hesam said quietly, in an almost reproachful tone. "I thought I told you to hang in there."

"I didn'?" Peter's voice was almost inaudible, his eyes still closed.

"Not very convincingly." Hesam patted his hand. "Hey. Are you in pain?"

Peter weakly shook his head.

"Well, that's something. Emma told me they had some fine-tuning problems with the medication yesterday." When Peter didn't answer, he added, "And there's more good news. Your niece is on her way here."

Peter's eyes opened a fraction. "Claire?"

"Yeah." Hesam watched his face and saw relief there. "So – she can heal others as well? Not just herself?"

Peter gave a weak smile and closed his eyes again, and made no reply.

Hesam was itching to ask more questions, but realised that this was an even worse time than over restocking the paed box, or waiting to be dispatched for bullshit calls.

"It's OK," he told Peter. "Get some rest. I'll be back again later."

* * *

Peter didn't know how much time had passed since Hesam had left. He wasn't even sure how much time had passed since loading a cocaine-intoxicated man into 159 with Anne Kraszewski on Eldridge Street, which was the last thing he remembered with any clarity. It could have been anything between a few hours and a week or two. Everything that had happened immediately afterwards was a blur of frenzy and pain that Peter didn't even want to dwell on. It had been followed by a much darker and more confused blur of voices, more pain, if never as searing as it had been in the ambulance, the constant beeping of a heart monitor close to his ear, people trying to tell him something or just being there, to varying degrees; his mother, Emma, Hesam, doctors, nurses. Right now, he was only glad to be almost pain-free, and feeling pleasantly numb. The only thought he made himself hang on to was that of Claire, even though, after nodding off and waking up again a couple of times, he wasn't even sure anymore whether Hesam had truly been there to tell him Claire was on her way, or whether he'd just dreamt that. It didn't really feel like something that would happen in the real world, the longer he made himself think about it.

He woke to the sound of voices. It always took him a couple of minutes to concentrate on his surroundings enough to make sense of them, and when he did, he became aware that a nurse was there, talking to Hesam, then leaving again after changing his IV.

Then, the next voice he heard took him completely by surprise.

"Peter? Can you hear me?"

Peter opened his eyes with difficulty, and saw Claire bending over him, her face worried.

"'s good t' see you," he said, around a tongue which felt one or two sizes too large.

She gave him that sad little smile he'd seen on her face so often before. "Why is it that you can't stay in one piece for longer than two weeks at a stretch?"

He just returned the smile, feebly, and made no reply.

Claire took his hand. "At least you weren't trying to play the hero this time. Hesam told me."

He didn't answer, just held her hand, concentrating on the familiar sense of her power flowing over to him, but there was something that prevented him from accessing it. This, too, was something that he had felt several times before in his life, the effects of strong medication interfering with his abilities.

Exhausted, he shook his head. "Won't work," he whispered.

"Because of the meds," she guessed.

Peter nodded.

Hesam helplessly looked back and forth between them. "What now?" he asked.

"That benzo?" Peter murmured, with a look at Hesam.

Hesam took at look at the IV bag, and nodded. "Lorazepam."

"Which means?" Claire asked.

"Benzodiazepine," Hesam explained. "That's a strong sedative; it would take hours to even start leaving his system if we took him off it now. And even if nobody noticed it if we discontinued the IV drip, which is extremely unlikely – I'm not sure he could take that."

Peter felt queasy at the thought alone.

"So, plan B," Claire said quietly, and turned to Hesam again. "We need a syringe."

Hesam raised his eyebrows. "What for?" he asked.

"My blood. It can heal him. All we need is a syringe. That shouldn't be hard around here, right?"

Hesam shook his head. "Now wait a minute, wait a minute. You want to inject him with your blood?"

Peter had to smile in spite of himself. "Hesam," he said. "Just stop being a medic for five minutes… and do what she says."

"You serious?" Hesam said, still incredulous.

Peter nodded.

"I can't believe I'm about to do this. How much do you need?"

"Just a syringeful," Claire answered.

Hesam cast Peter a helpless glance. Peter was still grinning weakly. "No vacutainers. 10 milligrams should do it."

Shaking his head, Hesam left to get a syringe.

Claire looked after him. "That was asking a lot of him, right?"

Peter gave another nod, closing his eyes again.

Hesam appeared again a few minutes later, with a monovette syringe he'd got from the supply room. His expression remained one of scepticism as he unwrapped it, and prepared to draw blood from Claire. Peter noted that she didn't try to dissuade Hesam from swabbing her arm with an alcohol prep before sticking her.

He looked at Peter for help again when he was done.

"Try the port on the cannula," Peter said, slightly raising his right hand, his voice exhausted. "That'll work fastest."

"_Try_?" Hesam asked, dubious.

"Do it."

Peter closed his eyes as Hesam pushed the contents of the syringe through the IV port in his hand. The effect was not as instantaneous as Claire's ability itself, as healing had to work its way to where it was needed more slowly, but after half a minute, Peter could feel the dull throbbing in his stomach starting to subside, along with the burning in his shoulder, and at the same time, he felt his head clearing noticeably as the medication started to wear off more rapidly. There was a twinge in his chest as a rib or two knitted as if they'd been broken during CPR, and Peter remembered Emma telling him he had coded before arriving at the hospital.

He remained lying there for half a minute longer before he trusted himself to sit up. He heard Hesam gasping – and couldn't fault him; there couldn't have been any other dramatically visible signs that Claire's blood had worked. He pulled off the oxygen mask and froze momentarily at a sensation of rather intense discomfort in his abdomen; he hadn't known until now that he'd had a kidney removed, but he'd sure as hell just regrown one.

"I'm OK," he told Hesam when the moment had passed, pulling out the IV in his left arm, then the second cannula in his right hand. Hesam stared as both puncture marks vanished immediately.

"I'll be damned," he whispered. He threw Claire a look that was halfway between awe and fear.

"I'm sorry," Peter said, and meant it. "I should have found a less unsettling way to break it to you." He reached over to switch off the alarm on the monitor before removing the ECG leads, so he wouldn't bring in the Mercy Heights code team, suspecting a cardiac arrest because of the sudden absence of heart sounds.

"I… take it this wasn't new to you either," Hesam guessed.

"No," Peter said simply.

"So how the hell are you going to explain this?" Hesam asked, gesturing around himself, looking from Peter to Claire. Both of them exchanged glances.

"I'll think of something." Peter looked down at the hospital johnny he was wearing. "I wish I had some clothes here."

Claire pointed over to an empty chair by the far wall, where Peter spotted a stack of dark clothes. "I picked some up at your mother's. She told me you'd probably need them."

Peter shook his head with a chuckle, but didn't explain to Hesam this time. "Where's your dad?"

"I got him to wait downstairs. And that was not as easy as it sounds."

"I can imagine." Peter turned to Hesam, but he was looking back through the Plexiglas window.

"Seems that explanation will have to take place right now," the Iranian remarked, and Peter followed his glance, a queasy feeling in his gut as he saw Dr Byrd, accompanied by a nurse, coming along the ICU corridor.

Seemingly, they hadn't even been on their way to him, but Peter saw Jake, the nurse, look through the window, shout something, and seconds later, he was in the room, followed by a mystified-looking Dr Byrd.

"Mr Petrelli?" Jake stared at him, at the black monitor, then at Claire and Hesam.

"It's OK," Peter said, as Dr Byrd stood as stunned as Jake. "I'm all right."

"What happened here?" Dr Byrd demanded.

Jake's eyes were fixed on Claire. "I've seen you on TV," he suddenly said. "You're the girl—"

Claire cast Peter a glance, and he gave her a minute shake of the head.

"It was me. Claire's not the only one. I can heal, too." He reached up to his shoulder, removing the dressing on the wound there. Both the doctor and the nurse stared at the completely clean, smooth skin where the gunshot wound had been. "Look, I'll explain more fully in a couple of minutes. Just let me change first."

"It's true, Doctor," Hesam said. "I've seen it."

They finally managed to convince Dr Byrd that Peter was indeed fine, but not until Jake had recovered enough to take Peter's pulse, and, perplexed, announced that it was completely normal.

Dr Byrd nodded slowly. "I'll trust you not to jump out of a window."

Peter refrained from answering, _Not this time_, and just nodded. The doctor hesitated for another moment, before he left, with the nurse in tow.

"I'll just wait outside while you change, too." Claire turned to go. She hesitated. "Thanks, Peter. You didn't have to do that."

"Yes, I did," Peter replied. She smiled at him, and left the room.

Hesam, too, turned to go after her, but then stopped in the doorway. "You sure you're OK? You've still been out cold for two days."

Peter nodded at him. "I'm good."

Hesam looked him over, his expression making it clear that he was still having trouble believing what he had just seen. "This is just so surreal."

"I know." Peter hesitated, then he said, "Hey, man – thanks."

"For what? Giving you the most unorthodox blood transfusion in medical history?"

"No," Peter said. "For getting me out of there. It can't have been easy."

Hesam was silent for a moment. "No," he agreed. "It wasn't. And I don't ever want to do that again. It's always harder if the guy on the stretcher is not just an address assigned to you by dispatch."

"Yeah, well." Peter hesitated. There was something else he was far more worried about than he should have been. "Like you putting me on Lactated Ringer's."

Hesam's face was sympathetic. "Come on, man – you're not seriously worried about that, are you?"

"I didn't wet myself though, right?"

"Dude, you puked all over me, and worry about the side effects of Ringer's?"

"Just tell me the worst thing I did was puke on you."

"Actually," Hesam said, his voice now very serious, "the very worst thing you did was coding on me."

* * *

"Thank you," Claire said again later that day. She and Peter were sitting on the hospital rooftop, at Peter's suggestion. It was getting dark already, and the city below lit up with a myriad of lights.

Peter smiled, and nodded.

The rest of the afternoon had passed with hundreds of examinations, questions and answers, and Peter had answered most of them as truthfully as he could, only becoming evasive when he would have had to expose the abilities of others, for whom he didn't want to speak.

"So what will happen next?" she asked, looking down at the blinking serpents of cars and cabs winding their way through the streets below.

Peter looked at her, smiling. "You scared?" he asked.

"Just a little." She looked at him. "Aren't you?"

He turned again to look at the brightly lit city. "It's a brave new world," he said.


End file.
